As the counter reaches zero I feel a tingling in my feet, it slowly spreads up my body feeling like I'm on pins and needles. As it gets to the top of my head I am standing in a field. Taking this chance to look around I see evenly spaced around me are the other participants all also looking around confused. Behind me someone starts laughing.
"Holy shit! This is awesome." I hear him say. I turn around and see the person who must have spoke now doing jumping jacks behind me, clearly enjoying the game that we have been placed into. As I get ready to go over and introduce myself I hear a voice inside my head.
"Greetings players, Lead developers and GM here I hope you all had enough time to get settled before the countdown. When the game goes live players will spawn in the town you see on the far side of the field to the north. However as our first players in this little test we figured we'd do something fun and introduce the world event system right away. Currently the town is overrun with goblins and for you guys to have a base of operations your first quest is to liberate the town from the goblins. Have fun!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Local Quest) Save the town!
Rewards: XP, ???
Failure: {Please don't lose to goblins}
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"What's up with this failure condition"
"I think the devs are just having fun."
"They did say we were all elite gamers so it wouldn't look good if we lost to some goblins."
The group seems nice and chatty so I decide to wander over.
"Hey, how's it going?" I ask
"Oh hey, ready to kill some goblins?" A taller dark haired guy looks over at me.
"Hell yea" Says a red head boy.
"They're going down!" Says the red head girl standing next to him. I wonder if they're siblings?
"I'm down but does anyone know how this works? Is there the holy trinity or is it just action style?" I ask
The tall guy says "well I chose healer and got a staff as well as 2 healing spells, a single target and an aoe."
"We're both dps classes." One of the red heads say. They're definitely together.
"Yeah I am as well. I wonder if.." I turn around looking towards the rest of the participants. Most of them seem to be walking in our direction. We did seem to be the only ones who gathered at first.
"HEY!" A larger man called out. He was dressed in plate so I'm hoping he's a tank. "Any of you have raid experience? Seems like this is going to be more than just your average quest. Though who knows whats average in this game."
The twins, and myself raise our hands. There are also a few cries of "me" from those still walking over.
"Awesome! This should be fun then. What's everyone's class?" The larger man asks.
After taking tally we learned we had 3 tanks 4 healers and 10 dps. We also have 2 crafter classes, a blacksmith and an alchemist, which I didn't even know was an option. And the guy who was laughing when we first zoned in was absent. Not a bad turn out. We separate out into a squad of six and two squads of five. The crafters said they had gotten quests to gather materials to start up their trades in once the town was liberated so we left them and headed towards the town.
"I'm Malthiel" said the larger man, our tank. "I'm a warrior class, I guess, large weapon fighting and heavy armor."
"Agatha here" said the female red head "Ranger class, standard bow and arrow stuff".
"I'm Roy, her brother" said the other red head. "Caster class, I have fire bolt and ice ball at the moment but I was told there were 6 elements and I want to master them all."
"Will" said our healer "I'm a healer class, I have heal and group heal. Not sure if we have to be in a group for it to work."
"Guess I'm last, my name is Styx" I say, "And I'm a rogue. Dagger, poison, all that fun stuff!"
With introductions over with we take some time to look around this world we've appeared in. Based on the buildings we can see in the distance and our armor it seems to be fantasy setting which I'm grateful for as that is my specialty. Though I assume the others would say the same.
"So are you guys all streamers?" I ask
"I am, generally the raid leader for my guild and I stream our raids" Says Malthiel.
"We have a MeTube channel and do coop MMO's" Says Roy with his sister nodding along.
"I'm actually a gaming blogger" says Will "I was surprised I got into the beta since I have no video presence. Guess there are a few readers of FAME in CM to get me a spot."
"Oh hey I read those articles sometimes when they come across my news feed!" I say. "I always find them entertaining, and often use your input when deciding what I should stream next. As for me I'm a streamer and while the NDA is unfortunate for current content but I'm stoked to be here and I'm sure my viewers will love to see this. "
"HEY" shouts one of the members of the other group "we just learned if you focus on the other players you can get a group going of sorts, hard to explain just give it a try."
"Shall I try it?" Asks Malthiel
Noone said anything, a few shrugs. "You said you were raid leader, I'd say that qualifies you to lead the party" I laugh. A few seconds go by and then I feel something of a presence pushing on my mind. I concentrate on it for a second and all of a sudden I feel like I can sense Malthiel better. I can gauge how healthy he is and feel where he's at without needing to look at him. In a few more seconds I can feel others popping up around me.
"That's weird, and I can see why it would be hard to explain." Says Roy.
"Which one of you is the party leader?" Malth shouts over to the other group "I want to try something."
"I am." calls the girl "Why whats up? Oh at least warn a girl before you do that." She laughs. Moments later I can get a sense of the other group too, not as detailed but its definitely there.
"What about you guys?" he looks to the group on the other side of us.
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"Rock Paper Scissors determined it would be me." Says an older gentleman. "Francis by name, healer by trade" He says.
"Pleasure to meet you. I'm going to add you to our... alliance? battalion? Well our party group anyway." Malthiel says and I can feel the other group join us as well.
"Oh this is cool!" I hear a voice right behind me. Turning to look there is no one there. I notice several others looking around.
"Who said that?" "Who's there?" "What the hell?" Several voices seem to overlap each other.
"Okay so" the first voice says again "apparnetly if you focus on the group as a whole before you speak you can send basically raid wide messages. We also figured out group messages by just focusing your group and even single messages if you focus on a single person."
Several people start talking at once some memes are shouted people acting goofy.
"HEY" I hear Malthiel's voice cut through the group. "I know we're all excited but we're closing in on the town so let's settle down and get ready, theres a lot for us to explore and learn but first we need a base of operations. Let's halt here, any rogues or stealth characters if you can meet out front and try to scout it out for us."
I walk out front of the group as does a female from the group to the left, she's wearing the same leathers as me but has a whip attached to her hip instead of daggers.
As she approaches I hear in my ear "Ok looking at the town we can split it left and right. Take the right half check it out and we'll meet back to report. Sound good?" She's all business.
I focus on her and say "Sounds good to me."
She chuckles "You don't even need to say the words just think it and it sends it. Useful for this type of scouting. Lets see if it works out of Line of Sight. When you get to the half way mark try to send me a message if you don't hear from me first as I'll try the same."
"Sounds good" I think. She continues to stare at me so I focus on her and say it again. "You actually still have to focus the person, that's good. I would hate to accidentally be sending messages."
She smiles and heads off towards the edge of town, I follow.
As we reach the edge of town we stop at a building. "Now I've only done this once so far..." I hear her say "but if you kinda crouch down and focus on making yourself be as small and sneaky as possible it should activate stealth for you."
I do as she says and crouch by the building out of the light.
######################
Gained Skill: Stealth lv0
Well you feel hidden.
-50% movement speed
-10% chance of being noticed by beings unaware you're in the area.
#######################
"Well that's cool." I think to my self. I look over to where my partner was but she was long gone by then. Or maybe her stealth is just higher than mine. I begin creeping off to through the town. As I'm going I do my best to keep track of everything I think will be pertanent for our attack. Mostly I just see goblins wandering about aimlessly. They don't look like a threat. In fact they don't even look like they know why they're here. I stop paying so much attention to them and start looking at buildings, getting a feel for the lay out of the town. In a semi-circle on this side of town I notice a group of building huddled together and make towards that as quietly as I can. Peering into the window I can see several square frames leaned up against the wall. Around the room are settled several large work table and hung on the wall are various tools. As I make my way around the outer edge I notice similar things in each of the buildings and decide I have found the crafting corner. This is confirmed when I reach the other side of the half circle and find a forge and anvil.
Focusing on the other member of my stealth team I think "Found anything interesting? I think I've found the crafting stations."
"Nice it does work, over here seems to be the inn and graveyard. Notice anything else weird?" I hear her voice reply.
"Like how none of the goblins seem to know why they're here?"
"No, I figure that's to be expected, they're goblins after all. Have you given a look towards the center of town yet?"
"Nope but I can get a good vantage point give me a second." I move to the edge of the blacksmith and climb on top of the low roof and peer ever so slightly over the peak towards the center of town.
"Is that the bank? Looks more fortified than most of the rest of these buildings" I think
"Seems like it, what do you think of the guards?" comes her reply.
"What guards?" I say. But then I notice subtle movement by the building in the center of town. From where I'm sitting I can only see the front edge and side of the building but I notice several guards. "Oh, are those goblins?" I ask
"Looks like it to me, but they're carrying spears and shields and definitely look more alert than the mindless ones running around town. Almost as if the mindless ones are to lull any observers into thinking they're just mindless creatures." She replies. "I think whoever is in charge is sitting in there. Let's report back."
"Sounds good I'll meet you around front." I reply, quickly hopping down from my perch and sneaking back around the buildings.
As I approach the building we started at I see her standing there already, and when I wave she just nods and starts heading towards the group.
"You know this is a game right?" I project my thoughts at her.
"Yes but they're expecting us back." She replies.
"You're right" I say "So how about this. Last one there is a rotten egg!" I take off running.
"Oh you're on!" I hear her running behind me.
I see that we have a decent distance to go so I put my head down and really dig in to the run, just giving it my all. Suddenly I can feel my self moving even faster than I thought I could run. It really helps me put some distance between myself and the town. As I start to slow down I notice a notification and focus on it.
######################
Gained Skill: Sprint lv0
I AM SPEED.
+50% movement speed
15 second duration
After buff duration -10% movement speed.
5 second duration
#######################
"Did you get a skill too?" I think over to my race opponent.
"Yes I did, this race was more rewarding than I thought it would be." She replies.
"Based on the way things have been going so far I figured we might, playing to our strengths seems to help unlock skills useful for our class." I say
"Welcome back!" I hear Malthiel call to us as we come back. "Glad to see you're both safe, save us any monsters?"
"We didn't kill any, just recon as you said." Said my partner.
"Yeah well some of the others weren't sure if you were going to stick to that, we had set a timer and if you guys didn't come back soon you might have had half the group coming in after you" Malthiel laughed. "So what did you guys find out?"
"There are a bunch of goblins milling about the outer village, seemed kind of dazed and confused not really sure why they're there." I begin
"I counted almost 30 on my side" She states.
"Oh, I didn't know we were counting. But if I had to hazard a guess probably about that many on my side as well." I say "I did however find the crafting stations. So once we get this cleared out this will be a nice little camp."
"Well first things first. So we have approximately 60 goblins to deal with?" asks Malthiel.
"Well not exactly." I say.
"We also saw some goblins that were actually wearing armor and looked like they were guarding the central building, which seemed more reinforced, perhaps the bank? I counted 4 guards and assuming they are stationed the same around the rest of the building that brings us to 8 guards plus an unknown force inside. " She states.
"Okay strange, so 68 outside plus an unknown amount inside, so we can safely assume perhaps 80 plus some sort of leader or boss type." Malthiel says.
"Sounds about right to me." comes another voice. As we look towards the voice Francis walks over towards us.
"Guys, while you were out we decided some structure was needed, I was voted as raid leader, and guild leader provided that's a thing. Francis will be second in command. Do either of you have any objections? We can hear your bids if you'd like to make a run for either position." Malthiel says.
"I have enough stress without leading another guild" I say. I notice the other rogue is shaking her head as well.
"I had a feeling you guys wouldn't mind, the stealthy types generally don't want to be front and center anyway." Malthiel laughs. "Now let's go kick some goblin butt!"
He turns to face the rest of the group. "Can I have everyone's attention! Our recon team has come back and let us know that we're up against a force of about 80 goblins. The larger portion of the group just seems to be dimwitted goblins we all have come to expect, but a small portion in the center of town seems to be guarding the central building with some discipline. Our first goal is to clear out the dimwits then when we understand our abilities and how this world works with fighting we will decide how to best approach the center. Lets move out!"
There's a large cheer from the assembled players and everyone begins making their way down towards the village.